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Sister Jude

And it ended as it began but I for one, still have about 148 questions.

It’s the present day and we meet Lana and her new sapphic squeeze, an opera singer or performer of some sort, as she’s being interviewed by a TV news crew and Lord, did the make-up people work on her face, to give her a necessary seventy or eighty year old look. Apparently, she’s an accomplished author with six–count ’em–six best selling novels and not only that, she’s apparently, a TV personality too; an investigative reporter and host of her own TV show, you know the kind–that of the crime solving genre. She’s also about to be honored at the Kennedy Center.

Apparently, her ambitious need to expose Briarcliff as the hell hole it is, is what catapulted her to such success. The expose began as a documentary. She and a camera crew sneak into Briarcliff courtesy of that secret tunnel that Sister Satan introduced to at the very beginning. We hear how she demanded to see Sister Jude who according to Lana tells us, is still there, lo those many years later.

We treated to a scene of Lana and company entering Jude’s cell, dark and dank and dirty, and on what was once a bed–I think–sits a clump of humanity with wilder than wild hair. The camera lights prove it’s Jude, who was left in Briarcliff and forgotten. Jude was the only source left that could prove how the Church (when it owned the asylum) had looked the other way with regards to mistreatment and scientific experiments.

But is it really Jude? Nah, that was either Lana’s poetic license…OR…..really bad editing.

We learn that Kit actually rescued Jude and took her home to live with him and his two kids. The Sister Wives are no longer part of the equation. His mulato wife killed grace with a couple of ax whacks in the back. Jude’s name is now Betty Drake. Kit said he did it–took Jude into his home–as his way of forgiving and forgetting all that crap that happened to him at Briarcliff. Taking care of Jude, he felt, was his redemption.

He conveys to Lana that it was rough going for a while. After a lengthy detox, Jude was sedated for years. She’d forget where she was from time to time and think she was back at Briarcliff and scream and carry on, yelling at Kit’s kids mostly. She couldn’t understand why there were kids around her. There was no children’s ward at Briarcliff.

Years later while in the midst of a swing dance lesson, Jude develops a bloody nose. I’m thinking leukemia We see her on her death bed, whispering life lessons to Kit’s kids.

To the son: Don’t take shit from the man.

To the daughter: Never let men dominate you.

The kids are sent out of the room and Jude sees the Angel of Death making her last appearance in the corner of the room. There she is, decked out in black, wings fully extended and all puckered up to give Jude that final kiss that’ll take her up, up and away.

Or down, down, down, if you believe the Old Testament.

So, by 38 minutes into the season finale, Jude dies and we’re whisked back to present day. Lana accomplished her goal and closed down Briarcliff. She decides to take on the Monsignor–now a Cardinal in New York. She says he knows about Dr. Arden, the experiments…the cruelty, etc., and we learn that he offs himself in a bathtub. Slit wrists which are oozing life, turn the bathwater to a deep crimson.

Lana then tells the reporter that she carried Bloody Face’s child to full term and gave him up for adoption. His name is Johnny. We’ve met him before. Dylan McDermott’s character is genetically programmed to grow up to be the be Son of Bloody Face and all that that implies. His made an effort to pick up where his father left off. We saw evidence of that.

Anyway, Lana continues on with the interview and expresses regret for giving him up, but felt she had no other options. And wouldn’t you know, Johnny seemingly part of the camera crew. He even hands her some water during a break in the interview. Somehow, she knows it’s her son. After the camera crew leaves, she gets up to make herself a drink and knows he stayed behind. She implores him to finally come out of hiding to ‘get this thing over with.” She knows he’s about to kill her. Johnny is a psychotic sure, but he’s also an angry whack job, which never bodes well. He was a screwed up kid, in and out of Juvie and now here he is, 48 years old and wanting to whack his mother for giving him away and killing his father.

He pulls a gun on her, but she turn the tables and sweetly convinces Johnny that he’s not only a part of his maniacal father, but he’s also a part of he That means he has at least half the capacity to be a decent human being. He relinquishes the gun and she takes it away from him, only to point it at his forehead and shoots.

Bang!!!!

Like father, like son.

The show segues back to the very first show, when Lana was desperately trying to gain access to Briarcliff to get an exclusive with Bloody Face. She gained access to Jude’s office through a ruse. She claimed she wanted to do a fluff piece on the asylum’s bakery which apparently makes a dandy bread. Jude escorts her to the front door after learning that the all she really wanted was an interview with Bloody Face who was supposed to be brought to Briarcliff for mental assessment. She reminds Lana how difficult life can be for a woman with lofty goals and ambitions. This was 1962. The last thing we hear; the last thing we see are these two women facing each other with glares that had laser-like intensity. This was how the first scene with Lana and Jude ended 51 years ago, when Jude realized Lana only wanted to interview Bloody Face. Jude tells her that whenever you look into the eyes of evil, evil looks back at you.

Then, Lana leaves and Jude turns around as the camera pans to the face of a shiny, glossy statue of the Virgin Mary which stands in Briarcliff’s foyer. The head is tilted as if glancing in the nun’s direction. Gee, no hidden anti-Catholic sentiment there, huh?

I suppose it’s safe to say that Lana’s stint in the snake pit that was Briarcliff didn’t turn Lana into some cold, emotionless bitch with ambitions large enough to choke a whale. Lana entered Briarcliff that way and walked through its doors unchanged. Sister Jude recognized that right off the bat and in her special, ‘no holds barred’ manner, told her so. She wasn’t predicting Lana’s life per se, but she certainly called it. Lana didn’t have what Jude or Kit had: at least a small period in life where there was peace and normalcy.

If I’m right, then I’ll give the writers a rate-a-record score of 79 for adding a smidge of pathos, but was it enough? Not for me, then again, I’ve come to expect a certain shoddiness with AHS..

Characters were killed off too soon. There were more holes in the plot line than in Bonnie and Clyde’s ambushed car. We didn’t get to spend much time in Johnny’s head. I could’ve used an episode delving into all of his angst. What about that evil little girl who killed her friend and then her whole family? What happened to the crazy ass serial masterbator???? And Kit’s alien space babies? The ones that were so ‘special’? One grew up to be a doctor, the other a lawyer. Hhhhh’mmmmm, do those two occupations in this day and age really make them all that ‘special’? Well, for a Jewish mother, maybe……

Lana was the only major character who survived. Sister Satan and Dr. Arden were burned to death in the asylum’s crematorium. Threadson was shot in the head several episodes back. The Monsignor/Cardinal committed suicide. As far as I’m concerned, all three deaths happened prematurely and allowed a season finale that was anti-climatic. In the finale, Jude died of cancer and so did Kit, although he was abducted by the same bright white light that became an obscure third or fourth level character on the show this season. Why wasn’t this connection to space beings expounded upon? Why did those space freaks murder and mutilate all those women? What happened to Pepper the Pinhead??? And why couldn’t we learn more about the forest dwelling critters that Arden created? And soooooo much more could’ve been done with the satanic angle, but nooooooooo!!!!!!

Season two jumped the shark so many times that poor thing’s dorsal fin was sheared off.

Anyway, I wasn’t as colossally disappointed as I was when season one ended. And while I have questions, I think that the unscripted dangling participles that I swat away like slimy tentacles are supposed to make me come up with my own answers; my own conclusions. Whenever I encounter endings like this in books, TV shows, movies and such, I hearken back to a press conference I attended back in 1993.

Directing wunderkind, Steven Spielberg came to Houston on a press tour promoting his boffo hit, “Schindler’s List.” This involved filling a theater with local high school kids, have them watch the movie then he would take their questions about the flick. All members of the press could do was watch and at least in my case, learn.

One astute young woman asked Herr Spielberg about the little Jewish girl in the Warsaw ghetto who had worn the pinkish red coat; the only bit of color in the black and white film. Her question focused on the coat color and what that was supposed to mean.

He responded without missing a beat, “It means whatever you need it to mean.”

That day, I learned that poetic license was a tool that the story teller could use at his or her discretion and it’s one that sometimes, an audience member has to employ as well.

And in spite of my many criticisms, I can’t wait for Season 3.

Seriously, I can’t.

As for plotlines, I’m thinking a family of vampires moves into an abandoned but still ‘hot’ nuclear power plant and the fun begins when genetic mutations run amok while angry neighbors who complain, mysteriously after a mod painted van called “The Mystery Machine” filled with four hips kids including one beatnik lookin’ cat named Shaggy who pals around with his giant, snack eating, running in place while bongos play, talking dog with a speech impediment, arrives on the scene.

And here I’ll be at my keyboard poised at the ready in the minutes after the finale ends, closing the curtain on yet another fakakta AHS season. That’s when and where I’ll hold writers/creators Ryan Murphy and Bryan Falchuk responsible for series of shows that leave more questions unanswered, throw logic out the window and could have been/should have been so much better.

And because of that, I’ll fully expect one or both to appear on camera and admit that they would’ve gotten away with it too, if it hadn’t been for those meddling kids!!!!!

And yes, based on what I watched for roughly 42 minutes, I’d say it was.

Loved the intro.

It’s a few days before Christmas, 1962. A one Mr. Lee Emerson is a psychopath who kills a red kettle, bell ringing Santa Claus in front of a closed grocery store. He takes the suit and breaks into a suburban home where he befriends a little girl who hears a noise and comes downstairs. She greets him and acknowledges that Santa has a massive blood stain on his chest. He’s playing with the electric train encircling her FABULOUS aluminum Christmas tree. He ends up killing her mom and dead after tying them up with Christmas lights. What happened to their daughter–the one with the badly feigned New England accent we’ll never know.

And I had to laugh at all the double entendres he offered his victims, one he threatened to rape, both he made clear he would kill:

The difference between that Santa and me is that he only comes once a year

Come on, there’s always at least one big ticket in Santa’s sack.

A year later, we’re invited to a Christmas party-slash-photo op in the Common Room at Briarcliff. Mr. Emerson is there with the other inmates and yes, he’s shackled. Apparently, Mr. and Mrs. Suburbia and Santa Claus weren’t the only people he killed. There were 15 murder others that night. Sister Jude is ramrodding things and making it clear she wants Emerson in the photo–front and center–to assure residents in the area that he’s in custody. Well apparently, ‘thems fightin’ words” to this mass murderer. He then does his best Hannibal Lector impersonation and bites the face and neck of one of the orderlies. For his actions, he’s sent to solitary confinement somewhere in the bowels of Briarcliff.

Speaking of bowels, Dr. Arden admits his Nazi past during an interesting session with Sister Satan. He offers her a large pair of ruby earrings. She goes gaga over them. The devil loves anything red, dontcha know. She asks where he got them; if they’re a family heirloom. He tells her no, they belonged to a wealthy Jewess in one of the camps who kept the jewels hidden by swallowing them over and over again…even to the point of digging through her own feces to find them….only to swallow them again She didn’t want the Nazis to have them. Well, she ends up dying of intestinal sepsis and internal bleeding. Seems all those jewels wreak havoc on a human G.I. tract. This little tidbit doesn’t bother Sister Satan in the least.

But the fact that she greedily accepts the present–in spite of its horrific past—concerns Dr. Arden. He realizes that this isn’t the Sister Mary Eunice he once fantasized about. No this…this thing in a nun’s outfit is evil and with his past, he ought to know. He meets with Sister Jude who’s been banished from Briarcliff. He realizes they need to join forces to fight Sister Satan. And yes, both Arden and Jude know that the devil is inhabiting the young novice’s body. But this only proves to be a scheme to prove the ex-Nazi’s loyalty to Sister Satan and the power pact they have between them. You know—world domination. You can take the boy out of the Reichstag, but can you ever take the Reichstag out of the boy????

In fact, in an earlier scene, Sister Jude sneaks back in to Briarcliff and bends over Sister Satan and holds a straight razor to her neck, telling her that if she kills Mary Eunice she’ll free her soul and banish Satan back to hell. Sister Satan says that’s crap and that all she can do is cane the devil out of Mary Eunice. All of a sudden, the cabinet door opens and several stage hands who are off camera, throw canes at Jude’s hunched over butt.

Another funny scene takes place in the Commons Room. Sister Satan is hosting a Christmas party for the inmates. There’s a tree but because of Sister Jude’s hard assitude, there are no ornaments. So Sister Satan improvises. She cuts bows off female inmates heads–hair still attached. She uses empty pill boxes….even one inmate’s dentures. Festive.

Meanwhile, Lana discovers Kit is in a bed next to hers in the hospital. She tells him that she was kidnapped by Threadson and he’s the real Bloody Face. If you remember, she’s still recovering from a massive accident two weeks ago and of course ,he was injured battling one of Dr. Arden’s in the kitchen last week. Remember, one of the guard’s shot Grace who jumped in the way to take a bullet for Kit who’d escaped from jail and returned to Briarcliff to rescue her. She was recovering from an erstwhile hysterectomy at the hands…er uh…at the ‘tentacles” of space aliens which apparently, also inhabit that bullshit barn of horrors. All guards were given a ‘shoot on sight’ order.

As for the dead creature, all we know about him or it, is that one of the guards is having a bout with conscious and feels the cops need to be called in. He references one of them–dead in last week’s attack–hidden away in some room. Dr. Arden says nah, don’t involve any outsiders. So, now we know he’s going to die which he does–later–because Sister Satan slashes his neck and plans on blaming it on Emerson the Killer who she allowed to play Santa Claus at the part in the Common Room. He’s sitting there, an inmate on his lap. he propositions her. Something about getting savage with each other and sucking something. Sister Satan then sigs him on Sister Jude who came back to Briarcliff as a ruse to kill Sister Satan.

As for that part of the story, just as Emerson is about to rape Jude (he’s already beaten the crap out of her) she finds a letter opener on the desk and jabs him in the neck. He bleeds out and keels over. But does he die? Not sure but I do know this much: irony of ironies, what Jude did will all but ensure that she ends up an inmate in her own asylum. Revenge is a bitch.

Lana sneaks into an office and finds a phone to call the authorities and in the process, is found by Dr. Threadson who learned of Lana’s post accident whereabouts in a news story. He’s about to strangle her when Kit suddenly bursts through the door and bops him on the head. Lana insists she needs to kill him but Kit says no, he needs Threadson alive because he’s the only who can prove he didn’t kill his wife or anyone else. They tie him up. As the scene ends, Lana says one day, “I’ll bury you”,.

Hhhhhhhhmmmmm…interesting.

Lastly, Threadson is seen escorting Grace’s body (that child has been on ice for a week!!) down the Death Chute when suddenly, he hears an ear-piercing noise and bright lights. He passes out for a flash and VOILA!!! Grace’s body is gone. They aliens already have her uterus. They came back for the rest of her.

A couple of things to note: Lana is seen earlier heaving up her lunch in a bed pan…only thing is, she tells the nun/nurse she hasn’t eaten. I’ll ask the obvious question here. The one we all have: could she be pregnant??

WITH THREADSON’S CHILD???????

And could Dylan McDermott (who thanks to a preview of next week’s AHS, we learn will make an appearance), be Bloody Face, Version 2.5??? A few episodes back, the opening scene included several murder victims all strung up in the rafters of the current dilapidated Briarcliff. It included a phone call made to the cops. Someone saying that he’d been a ‘bad boy” and that imposters are dead at the old asylum. The voice sounded like Mr. Mac and if that’s the case, that would sure answer that timeline question we’ve all asked about Bloody Face then and Bloody Face now.

With Dylan McDermott as The Son Of Bloody Face, that would explain how the maniacal acts are still being perpetrated more than 50 years later.

Hosting eleven for Thanksgiving dinner last week precluded me from commenting about episode six though God knows there was a lot to discuss. All I can say is “Baby needs colostrum” now joins “show me your mossy banks” in the pantheon of exceedingly strange AHS phrases that have peppered the dialog this season. I have no doubt there will be more to come.

A new character named Miles is fighting schizophrenic voices as he helps prepare sandwiches in the Briarcliff. A nun is using a meat slicer to hack off some bologna when one of the voices tells Miles to grab it by the wrists. The next scene, he’s on a stretcher, there’s blood everywhere and on the wall, scribed in the crimson stuff is a word. It looks like it’s spelling out “one” in funky lettering but when Sister Satan enters the room, she informs us that its ancient Aramaic. She then she asks our Bleeding Buddy on the gurney if he summoned “her’.

‘What? Huh??”, inquires the dazed self-induced hemophiliac.

He’s wheeled away and placed in a room as a panicked Sister Satan runs amuck, obviously bothered by the fact that “one” is now at Briarcliff.

The next scene we find a restrained Miles telling the guard he doesn’t want to be at Briarcliff any longer. In fact, he no longer wants to be in this world any longer. When the guard leaves, a woman in black appears at the foot of his bed. At first, I thought it was actress May Steenburgen She looked familiar. It was Frances Conroy, who played Moira the maid last season. The older milk eyed version.

She reminds Miles that he in fact, summoned her and then asks if she can basically kiss him and make it all better. She puckers up and when she does, she sprouts black wings that while large in terms of span, look awfully paltry feather-wise. They were sparse; like something you’d find in a discount costume shop. She obviously has killer kisses. Miles dies. Just then, she realizes that someone is at the cell door.

It’s Sister Satan.

She walks in; they recognize each other. Black Angel Cheap Wings calls her “Cousin” and soon realizes that as angels go, she’s the fallen one.

Lucifer.

And she knows that he/she is inhabiting the young nuns body. For a second, Sister Mary Eunice comes screaming through possessor. Sister Satan reclaims her host, and sends Black Angel Cheap Wings away saying she’s already done what she came to Briarcliff to do.

I’m assuming this is the Angel of Death, sans the large scythe and cloak and hood.

She also pays a visit to Lana after Threadson rapes her. Incest on top of serial murder??????? What a cad!! But Lana tells her ‘no’.

A little back story; we learned last week that he felt Lana was his ideal mother figure. But it seems that even homicidal maniacs have a conscious and a disdain for their own Oedipal issues. He decides his indiscretion was reason enough to waste Lana, but a struggle ensues, she bops Threadson over the head with the photo of Wendy, her lover and manages to break free. She runs out of Threadson murderous pied à terre and on to the highway where wouldn’t you know, she flags down one a driver, which happens to be one of THEE angriest misogynist on the planet.

He hates women; holds them responsible for every pain and misery he has and pulls out of gun and shoots himself as his ’61 Plymouth goes out of control and careens into a tree. Black Angel Cheap Wings makes an appearance in the backseat and once again offers Lana a homecoming, but declines once again. The next thing we know, Lana is back in Briarcliff and under Sister Satan’s care.

She tells the horned one that Threadson is Bloody Face and that his tastefully decorated home has a basement of horrors. Sister Satan remembers conveying this while possessing the body of the Farm Boy ( yet another serial masterbater that we met in Episode Two). He told Threadson who was in attendance that he appreciated his handiwork.

Sister Satan believes Lana, then sedates her, assuring her that she’s safe. No one knows she’s at Briarcliff.

We also learn that Kit/Tate escaped from prison. He’s on his way back to Briarcliff to get Grace who was abducted by aliens and Kit’s wife a few weeks ago. Remember? The performed an ersatz hysterectomy on her.

Sister Satan tells Dr. Arden that he botched the sterilization that Sister Jude ordered after she caught Grace and Kit screwing around. Arden denies it all and resents the way Sister Satan is addressing him. He’s about to hit her and she goes all Reagan McNeal on her and like a scene out of the The Exorcist, telekinetically bitch slaps him and like Fathers Merrin and Karras from the movie, flings him half way across the room.

A classic coup’d tat deftly handled. And Arden knows all too well there’s been a transfer of power.

The story line with Sister Jude is getting interesting. She’s been reassigned and his leaving Briarcliff, but has to handle a few things first. Like getting the Nazi Hunter she enlisted a few episodes ago to properly deal with Arden, who we all know was a doctor within the Third Reich. But Sister Satan killed him with a piece of mirror. A large shard right to the jugular!

Jude finds him in a bloody mess in his bathroom. She calls an ambulance but stops short when she senses he had died. And he does. Black Angel Cheap Wings appears out of nowhere kisses him (this has got to be the proverbial kiss of death). Last week, he lived long enough to tell Jude that one of her nun’s was the perp.

Jude looks up and taped on the TV screen is a news article from 1949…a story about the little girl she hit while on a drunken bender. There’s a few flashbacks and we see Jude in her civies sitting in the sadly appointed living room of a typical New England couple. They are Missy’s parents, we soon learn. Missy is/was the little girl in the blue coat that was out playing in the road late one night; the hit and run that changed everything.

Well, in walks an adult Missy in a nurse’s uniform.

She survived????

Huh?? How did Sister Satan not know this??? Maybe because Old Scratch can only get in our heads and root around to get at our biggest fears and guilt trips. Therefore, if Jude thought Missy Blue Coat Front Bumper Fodder was in fact dead, so would Sister Satan. She’d play off that.

Earlier, Jude imagined slitting her wrists in the Tastee Freeze bathroom. She walked out and encountered Black Angel Cheap Wings who she recognized. Seems Jude has threatened to take her own life many times before. The two are old pals. She tries to talk Jude into finally letting go; seek the peace only Black Angel can offer.

“Let’s French!!!!”, she all but suggests.

No, insists Jude. There’s at least one more thing to take care of before that ultimate swappage of spit. And that was to confess to Missy’s grieving parents which ultimately, created one helluva monastic tap dance in the living room of Missy’s parents. Jude was dumbfounded when Missy and her cat eye glasses walked into the room. She’d spent 13 years thinking she killed Missy. But was injured and there’s still the matter of the hit and run; the failure to stop to render aid.

Lastly, Kit/Tate makes his way back to Briarcliff and darts in and out of the tunnels in an effort to find Grace and run away with her. He bursts through the kitchen door. She’s eating a snack with a nun. Yes, she’s better now—up and walking around thanks to the miracle of sulfa drugs and Bactine administered by Dr. Arden, earlier in the show. But the guards know he’s an escapee and have been ordered to shoot him on sight. one was nearby and heard the nun scream. He goes into the kitchen; sees Kit and shoots, but Grace ends up taking the bullet for him. Shot in the gut. Then one of Arden’s forest dwelling human eating creatures with the single quail plume-like dreadlock thing hanging from his head attacks the guards, then Kit, but Kit gets in one good lick and stabs him in the stomach and his entrails or something, falls all over the kitchen floor.

Then we’re treated to next week’s previews. It’s the Christmas edition of this season of AHS. Nothing says Yuletide quite like a crazed inmate in a Santa suit. Can’t wait.

As I mentioned in the beginning, good and evil are the focus here. It just so happens to these two things converge at an asylum. One thing is becoming apparent—from Arden’s Nazi past, to Grace’s murder of her family and of course, Sister Jude’s crazy ass life, evil is a part of man’s existence on this Big Blue Marble. We have to deal with it. Try as we might, we can’t erase that which we’ve experienced, nor can we turn a blind eye to it. All the characters this season hammer the point home that the evil and good are real; they exist independently, but they can’t co-exist, not without consequences.

That said, I’m beginning to think that the asylum is like some form of Purgatory. For those not raised under the tent of Catholic dogma, Purgatory is the condition of purification or temporary punishment before entrance to the Pearly Gates. Here’s the ecclesiastical 4-1-1, kids.

According to the Church and Wikipedia, immediately after death, a person undergoes judgment in which the soul’s eternal destiny is specified. Some are united with God; others reach a state known as Hell, the eternal separation from God often envisioned as a fiery, sulfur smelling place of punishment, misery and Lawrence Welk records. Apparently, it’s by one’s own free will that a person enters into the state of hell. It’s willful entry.

Conversely, one could argue that would apply to the opposite destination. Those who die in a state of grace are believed to be prepped and readied to move on up–to the Eastside. To that dee-lux apartment in the sky….eye….eye.

You know, Heaven.

I know that’s thought process, especially when applied to this show, is as insane as one of Briarcliff’s inmate. I tried to approach last season from a psycho/social mindset and I couldn’t have been more wrong. There was no Miltonian metaphor. No deep seeded Faustian explanation. The house was merely haunted. With ghosts. Phantams. Spectors…Ronnie AND Phil.

But all I know regarding this season so far is simple: if there IS a purgatory, a place for those who lived the worst life to be given the choice of redemption and head north….↑ (towards the sound of harps)

Why would the creative team of Falchuk and Murray shoot their wad so quickly? I mean, the identity of the person behind Bloody Face is this season’s Latex Onesey Gimp. And by the way, I still feel that one of last year’s MAJOR AHS plot flaws was a failure to reveal anything about this black shiny masochistic device, as in why Tate wore it. Why he killed while wearing it. We all knew he could kill without it. Remember the exterminator in the basement? There were other murders he committed without the suit as well.

So, why reveal five episodes in that Threadson is Bloody Face?

Okay, I’ll accept that he might be a murderer–he might even be the real Bloody Face, but I’ll bet you ANY amount of money that BF version 2012 isn’t Threadson, unless he’s also gotten that Dorian Grey thing down. Remember, this season takes place in 1964. For Threadson to still be whacking and hacking today, he’d have to be in his 80’s. The Bloody Face that attacked the haunted house touring honeymood couple, Adam Levine and the Mila Kunis/Selena Gomez clone in the first episode, sure was agile and fast for an octogenerian.

We’ll have to dissect this further once we learn more about Threadson and his plans diabolique for future female victims.

Meanwhile, LOVED the homage to Ed Gein with the nipple’s clearly visible in the lampshade made out of skin in Threadson fabu 60’s bachelor pad. Old Eddie was one extremely interesting homicideal maniac who was the inspiration behind The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Silence of The Lambs. He’d kill, rob graves and keep trophies of his exploits. A chair made or real human args and legs, etc.

Even the candy bowl on Threadson’s coffee table was the top of a skull. Cool, as was the trap door in his…uh “work room”. If you remember, Threadson took a fancy to reporter Lana Winters and promised he could/would rescue her from Briarcliff. He made good with her promise. He walked her right out, put her in her front seat of his car and even told an aproaching gaurd sent by Sister Jude to find him, that he no longer worked at Briacliff. In fact, he insisted that the guard tell her that “he never had worked there”.

Makes me wonder if he was ever really a shrink and just a well educated maniac who lied his way in to Briarcliff to find who or what he was looking for. I mean, hey–for a serial murder with a penchant for crazy, asylums make victims ripe for the picking. And after last night’s episode, it sounds almost like Lana will be spared because she’s a reporter and this murderous psychopath-slash- narcissist wants his story told. Perhaps Lana will get the story, but she’ll have to go tbrough HELL to get it written. He took the face off of Lana’s lover who he attacked in episode two and made a mask out of it. He crudely placed her teeth in and around the lips and asked Lana to give it a big old wet one.

Nercophelia is bad enough, but add dismemberment to the issue?????

Ed Gein was in to that, too.

Also, I’ve inclined to think that Grace (the French chick with the shag haircut) never went under the knife for her sterilization. I think she was abducted by the aliens from her cell (which by way, looked very much like the one Adam Levine’s wife hid from Bloody Face in). She was awakened by this approaching bright light and grinding metal on metal sound and just before we went to commercial, we were offered an extreme close up of Graces face and eventually her eye, and in a pinpoint light next to her pupil, you could see an image of something–it was either an octopus….a Portuguese Man of War…..OR….one of the tentacled but benevolent aliens that greeted Jodie Foster on the familiar beach of her mind in the movie, Contact.

Did anyone else see that or was I just having an acid flashback?

Anyway, she’s on an examining table on some nebulous sound stage and has some strange encounter with Alma, (I think that’s her name) which was Tate’s wife that was supposedly killed by Tate/Kit, but as we know, was actually abducted by aliens. So does this mean Alma is alive and living happily among the aliens or….did they simply need to move into her body to appear human to dupe the humans?????? You know aliens are.

Anyway, the next thing we know, she’s sitting in the Commons Room and bleeding vaginally. Tate/Kit sees her and thinks she was sterilized. Just then the guards come in with the police and arrest him for all the Bloody Face murders. They say they have his taped confession.

Which was something Threadson made him do in an old reel to reel recorder under the guise if he heard what happened in his own words there would be a better psychological connected to what really happened–or some psycho-babble shit. Threadson sent the tape to authorities giving them their Bloody Face and allowing Threadson to continue to thrill-kill willy nilly.

No, I don’t think Grace was sterilized. I think she was either crudely impregnated by the aliens or had an impromptu hysterectomy, not sure which. I say this because of the conversation he and Grace had in their adjoining cells. There was a lot of talk about wanting children…especially how much he and his wife Alma wanted kids. I feel there’s a connection there somewhere.

I also loved Chloe the hobbled nympho’s appearance at the bottom of the stairs near the school. Sister Satan told Dr. Arden that she took her out to the woods. Nah, she tossed her down the stairs just like Regan did with Father Karras at the end of The Exorcist. The stairs even looked like the ones in the movie and lest we forget, the demonic connection is shared in the story line. As we’ve learned over the past two seasons, Falchuk and Murray are not above pilfering (lovingly so) from their favorite horror movies.

Then there’s Anne Frank, supposedly Charlotte Brown, a housewife with one helluva bad case of postpartum psychosis. After having her baby, she became obsessed with Anne Frank and assumed her identity. Whether she’s Anne or not, she knew enough to be able to completely out Arden as Herr Doctor Gruber or Gruper, an insidiously cruel Nazi SS physician who toured the Concentration Camps performing ungodly experiments on inmates.

Eventually, Charlotte’s husband has to bring her back to Briarcliff–he can’t handle her and Arden performs a lobotomy on her. She goes home and transforms into this Stepford Wife who’s in the process of throwing away all her Nazi homework. But she didn’t get to all of the copies of photos and newspaper stories on the wall. Just as episode five comes to an end, the camera keys in on one remaining photo hanging there. It’s one of Hitler standing at a podium in the midst of some anti-Semitic/Final Solution speech and behind him is a scowling decorated SS officer and of course, it’s none other than, Dr. Arden Gruper Nazi SS Angel of Death Sadist Tool.

Lastly, did Sister Jude actually go out on the town, and with her red lipstick, seduce up a man at a bar and sleep with him? Or was that just a fantasy of her previous life or of a life she wants to live outside of her monastic confines???? Arden did say he was going to press charges against her because Anne Frank lifted a gun off a visiting detective and shot Herr Doctor in the leg. Just a flesh wound.

Sister Jude said the charges meant that it was over for her. She was done. Tooth pick inserted in the center and removed crumbless.

Here’s what I think: Threadson will keep Lana hostage in his hellish lair o’death forcing him to write his biography….a hat tip to the movie Misery, perhaps. Sister Satan will become increasingly more demonic and will form an unholy alliance with Arden to rule Briarcliff and with the help of the aliens, develop maniacal, imperialistic designs to eventually, THE ENTIRE WORLD!!!!!!!!!!!

I’ll bet Grace is pregnant. Tate/Kit somehow gets a ‘get out of fail’ card and we’ll learn more about the human eating, forest dwelling creatures, a sorority in which the hobbled nympho will surely be blackballed. Perhaps, the tubby teacher who saw her attempting to slither up the stairs near campus, will call the cops who’ll be able take her to the hospital where she might still be verbal enough to prove that she’s a prime example of Dr. Arden’s handiwork.

And then…maybe the Simon Wiesenthal-esque nazi hunter that Sister Jude contacted will finally get his man.

And in turn, so will Sister Jude.

Probably won’t be able to offer up an overiew of episode six next Wednesday. I’m cooking for 11 people for Thanksgiving in my lovely, semi-well appointed new home. I’ll be up to my armpits in dressing, cranberries and Kendrick holiday mayhem. See you back here for Episode Seven in two weeks.

Also, my epic piece on JFK assassination facts will be published Tuesday. this year marks the 49th anniversary of his death in Dallas. I’ve done a lot of research on regarding lots of little known facts about the case. Interesting read, if I say so myself.

What a difference a week makes. Seven days ago, the meek little convent rodent known as Sister Mary Eunice was possessed by Old Scratch himself during a botched exorcism of a young country boy. She was shy, reserved, vulnerable and frightened by her own shadow. This week, she’s a mean, angry, slut murderer. The very antithesis of what she was. Gee, I guess demonic possession will do that to you. She looks different; she talks different…her mannerisms are completely changed.

While in the common room, telling the inmates of fair Briarcliff that a storm is coming (art immitating life in the damndest way–Huricane Sandy), Sister Jude has decided that showing a movie when the storm hits, will help quell the neurosis that will no doubt result from thunder and lightning. The movie is a storm in it’s own right. I can’t remember the title, but it’s about sex, violence and the ‘death of Christians”. When describing it to the inmates. Sister Mary Eunice (Sister Satan) announces that fact with a gleam in her eye. Her pupils, I swear, turned red when she said it. That’s when one hip inmate who didn’t speak a lick of the King’s took one look at her and said in a frightened whisper, “SATAN!!”

Sister Mary Eunice Von Demonburg gave her an “I’ll deal with you later” look and trust me, she did…she killed the woman while praying, on her knees on the floor of her dingy, dirty cell, with scissors in the throat.

Sounds like a clue from the game, Clue.

Sister Satan immediately piled the body into a wheelbarrow and took it to the forest where she encountered one of the Creatures–at least I think it was one of the Creatures. This one, obviously drawn to the location in search of a fresh, hot lunch, had very human looking arms and hands. There was no exchange. The show segued straight to commercial

After 60 seconds worth of Proctor and Gamble propaganda, we return–it’s the next day; the day the Nor’Easter will hit. Sister Satan brings the mail in to Sister Judes. Included in the bills and super saver shopping notices, is a newspaper from June 28th, 1949, the day that Sister Jude, when she was known as Jud’s office. Now if you remember from last week, that was the day Sister Jude (then known as Judy, a gin joint singer and all-purpose fun girl, had run over a young girl while driving home with a snoot full. It was a fatal hit and run apparently. It’s also been haunting Sister Jude ever since and one of the principle reasons she became a nun. As if that could eliminate any and all guilt. Because it doesn’t and never will, Sister Jude freaks out. No one is supposed to know anything about her sordid past.

Enter paranoia and the frightening realization that Sister Satan–who no once seems to notice has become a far more fun character to watch–knows everything. Omniscience must be one of the few perks of possession. She’s gotten into Sister Jude’s head but good!!! She comes back into her office with a carafe of communion wine that she claims someone is drinking on the sly. She’s also wearing bright red lipstick, the same shade Jude wore back during party days. Sister Satan tries to get her to taste the wine, knowing full well she’s an alcoholic. Instead of sampling the grape stompings, she forcibly removes the lipstick which Sister Satan said she applied at the insistence of Dr. Mengele Arden. Remember, this pervert has the hots for the nunlet.

Now, Sister Satan decides to get in and romp willuy nilly in Dr. Arden’s head. She enters his office, coming off as the same naive monastic he’s knows and lusts after. Her purpose is to seduce him. She was wearing a garter belt and exclaimed that she was and I quote–“all juicy”as she exposed her “mossy banks” to him with her legs akimbo on his desk. This appalls the good doctor apparently, he likes his women to be pure, touchable only through fantasy. Dr. Arden bitch slaps her. Sister Satan just laughs and calls him a panty waste.

In the meantime, the storm starts to move in–thunder, lightning, driving rain. Hitchcockian weather to be sure. The phone rings in Sister Jude’s office, she answers it and it’s the voice of the little girl she struck and killed all those years ago. Oh, this is not good. Sister Jude is mentally screwed up as a result. Why is this happening? Who knows within the asylym walls that she’s a killer. She grabs the decanter of communion wine and starts drinking.

She drunkenly enters the common room that’s been turned into a theater and makes an announcement. It starts and in the darkness, Tate, Lana the Reporter, the Vague French Girl and Nymphomaniac make a run for it. They actually make it outside, thanks to the nympho who bought them some time by uh….well, “inflating” one of the guards who’s been searching for the Mexican, the woman with David Ferrie like eyebrows, who sensed Sister Satan was in fact, Sister Satan. She knocks him out and starts to run down the hall where her fellow escapees are waiting, but she’s cornered by Dr. Arden who decides this stormy night is the perfect occasion for him to finally sample her sexual wares, since he’s the last staffer in all of Briarcliff to do so. He forces her to assume the position and unzips his pants, but apparently, the doc and his body part that rhymes with his occupation is either ridiculously small or badly misshapen. The nympho laughs at it which enrages the doctor. He hits her over the head and knocks her out.

Meanwhile, Sister Satan awakens Sister Jude from her drunken slumber and tells her there are several inmates missing. She gets up and starts to look for them and encounters some crazy looking alien that we’ve not seen before. It’s a quick shot; you just get a fleeting plance, but it looked like a typical alien to me. This assumption is backed by an earlier radio weather update, in which the announcer blamed the storm for all the strange lights people have been reporting in the sky, possibly downed aircraft.

The trio of escapees run through the woods and stumble upon body parts…even in the wind and rain, they’re able to deduce its “The Mexican”. Take looks behind a bush and sees one the creatures, this very gross, bloody humanoid looking thing, chowing down on an arm. It gives chase. There’s another…then another. The Creatures look a lot like James Carville eating bar-b-que. They’re scared. So scared by the Creatures that they actually return to Briarcliff.

With the door open.

We then are taken back to Dr. Arden’s lab where the Nympho is coming to. Since she laughed at the doctor’s tiny bubbles, he punishes her. She is hobbled below each knee cap. She isn’t going anywhere and its safe to say that her days of giving BJ’s are over.

I enjoyed tonight’s episode, creepy and strange as it was.

A couple of other items of note: Lana the Reporter tried to get Dr. Threadson to give her Lesbian Teacher partner a message. Due to his hatred of Sister Jude and her crazy ass ways, he agrees. He goes to the teacher’s house, but she’s nowhere to be found. If you remember, she was attacked by someone–or something. Dr. Threadson found some blood on the carpet, but nothing else. When he reports this to Lana, she’s worried and also finally convinced that Tate isn’t Bloody Face.

Okay, Miss Teach is missing. What doees THAT mean?

Now, this episode began where last week’s left off: with Bloody Face stabbing Adam “One Armed” Levine as she watches from the confines of a closed cell. She thought she was safe.

Nah…

He burst through the door and started slashing her but Adam, despite being stabbed, minus one limb and about four quarts of blood, manages to attack Bloody Face from behind. Wifey finishes him off with several two armed stabs and might I add, it was very much the same way/style in which Sister Satan stabbed “The Mexican”.

Hhhh’mmmm……

She grabs Adam and they attempt to escape the Asylum only to be knocked off at the pass by Bloody Face. They turn and run the other way. Lo and behold, there’s ANOTHER Bloody Face waiting for them. There’s a whole freaking litter of these bastards roaming the halls. One pulls a gun and shoots the couple. They remove their masts to reveal two townies, trying to scare tourists who come to the rubble of Briarcliff for a good old-fashioned scare. This time though, things got out of hand, to put it midly.

But as any karmic devotee knows, what we put out in the world always comes back to us. The two townies are then confronted by yet another Bloody Face. This one had no bloody wounds on his chest. They lay eyes on him and they’re scared. Slack jawed scared. Their fates are uncertain. The opening theme started just as Bloody Face walked towards one of the guys, who resembled a poor man’s Billy Mumy.

How many Bloody Faces are there?

What in the hell is going on here? I’m even more perplexed than last year.

This episode while entertaining, was like this Hollywood screenplay on acid. It included almost every genre of horror known to man: demonic possession, human maming, murder, cannibalism, monsters, space aliens, criminal insanity and a very drunk head nun in charge.

Tonight, we saw that there’s a massive power play underway for total control between Sister Jude, Sister Satan and Dr. Arden. Sister Satan is pitting them against each other while getting her licks in.

Literally.

Scariest moment tonight? A drunk Sister Jude having a hit and run flashback while reciting in spoken word, the lyrics of “You’ll Never Walk Alone” from the movie and musical, “Carousel”. Odd.

One of the funniest moments? As Sister Jude announced the cast of the movie being shown in the common room, she called the magnificent Charles Laughton “a huge wuss”.

The portly Oscar-winning actor was gay or bi-sexual at the very least.

And lastly, very little was mentioned by Tate who was tied down to Dr. Arden’s examining table from Hell. The doctor wanted to see if he had any more strange little mechanical shape-shifting spiders hanging around his jugular vein. The doctor makes an incision, Tate screams and appears two scenes later with no marks or bandages. The doctor also acts as if the spider was a spying device; something all about espionage from the KGB…the Germans… maybe even the Jews. Everybody, he says, is interested in learning more about ‘his work”.

What exactly IS his work? And what’s the connection with the bevy of Bloody Faces? The neck dwellling spiters? The human eating Creatures?? A Satanic nun? So many attempts to usurp Sister Jude’s authority? The aliens? I have no clue. All I know is that this is one crazy salad in an even crazier bowl with Satanic nuance dressing and Hollywood screenwriters trying to outdoor themselves each week, tossing it.

Pun completely intended.

Based on something Sister Jude’s said in next week’s preview, I wouldn’t be surpirsed if we find out that I’m more right than wrong in comparing Dr Arden to Dr. Mengele, the Nazi “Angel of Death”.

Well, Adam Levine is dead. At least one can assume that’s the case after being stabbed in the torso numerous times by an ice pick weilding Leather Face look-alike.

This second episode begins as last week’s series premier ended. The Vanessa Hudgins looking wife was running through the asylum screaming for help after hubby, Adam Levine reaches into a dumb-waiter or laundry chute with phone in hand to get a peak at what’s on the other side. He screams in pain then pulls back a bloody stub. Someone or something has severed it. As wifey runs to get help, she runs into the Leather Face character and a chase ensues. It is, I swear, a scene straight out of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Wifey reaches Adam and his reconfigured lefty then tries to get him up and running. This isn’t working. LF (Leatherface) catches up with her…she abandons all efforts to get hubby on his feet and escapes to a cell and slams the thick metal door shut in the leather one’s face. Through the opening in the door that is the tray slot, she can see and hear everything. LF kneels over Adam and a fraction of a second after Adam Lelimb weakly asks LF to help him, he stabs him through the heart, chest, face neck….and what’s left of his arm. He then starts pounding on the cell door.

The scene immediately segues into the lesbian teacher’s living room. It’s 1964. She is there with two friends. The knocking on the cell door in present door audibly morphs into the sound of someone pounding on her front door. She’s encouraged not to answer it; there’s a murderer loose and he’s killing women. Nah, says one buttoned up looking extra from Mad Men. He was arrested in last week’s episode and is now put away; shackled securely the safe confines of Briarcliff. The knocking, it turns out, is just a group of kids a day early for Halloween.

Nevertheless, the stage is set.

Miss Teacher is crying to two friends, lamenting the fact that she allowed Sister Jude to essentially blackmail into signing a release allowing her reporter/lover to stay in the institution to heal–after being attacked when tried to ‘break in” to the asylum to get closer to the murderer known as Bloody Face. Miss Teacher insists that she’ll be fine. A toke on some spleef and a hot rinse off in a shower designed by Alfred Hitchcock and Anthony Perkins is all she’ll need.

She finishes her shower and throws open the white plastic curtain to the beat of a Dusty Springfield song. The hall is dark, the windows are open. Her robed figure turns to enter a room through those God awful 60’s beads and there he is: Leatherface. Miss Teach screams, trying to explain that she’s a teacher and that her kids won’t understand. That was a complete waste of last breath. Like a mass murderer clad in someone else’s facial skin can be reasoned with.

The scene fades to black and the intro begins. It is safe to assume, Miss Teach has gone to LPGA heaven.

CALLING LINDA BLAIR

A man and woman, obviously from rural Massachusetts are at Briarcliff complaining to Sister Jude about “their boy”, a chronic masturbator who ‘ain’t been hisself” lately. Pa done gone to the barn to find Junior nekked and gnawing on the heart of his best Guernsey cow, sayin’ all kinds crazy, dadburn things. Ma and Pa are flummoxed and he ends up committed to Briarcliff.

It is in episode two that we also get to mee Zach Quinto’s character. This go round, he plays a court appointed psychiatrist who is at the institution I guess, because the court appointed him to be there. Perhaps to assess the sanity (or the lack thereof ) of Tate/Kit/Bloody Face.

As Dr. Oliver Thredson, Quinto’s hair is short and wolfed back slightly. He brooding; never seems to smile and all that’s punctuated by the fact that he’s sporting these Kennedy Administration approved black horn rimmed glasses. He confronts Sister Jude about conditions at Briarcliff; the horrific nature of the cells and of course, the beatings and other forms of torture such as frequent electric-shock therapy treatments; administered just for grins it would seem.

She automatically hates the visiting shrink who deigns to mock her management skills. She reminds him that he’s a guest and should mind his own business. A few scenes later, he then walks in the conference Sister Jude is having with the hick parents. Dr. Threadson seems to think it’s all a part of adolescence run amuck. Sister Jude knows that the only things that can save this Guernsey-Bater boy are is A) a good caning and B) a little exorcism.

While Sister Jude plans an exorcism, Lana Winters (the reporter) and Grace, the French girl with the bad shag haircut (like Carol Brady on Aqua Net steroids) plot an escape from the asylum Grace wants to take Tate (Kit, the alleged Bloody Face). Lana says no, he can’t go claiming he’ll just kill again. For some reason, I really don’t think Lana thinks Tate/Kit is a killer. But she doesn’t like him. Perhaps because he’s a member of the Penis People and she loves the ladies. Perhaps, she’s developing a thing for Grace. They were naked together in a punishment tub and when she hopped bare butted out to enjoy the view….. well, let’s just say Lana enjoyed the view, too. The reporter is also aware that her lover, Miss Teach signed the paper essentially committing her to Briarcliff. Lana feels abandoned on a number of levels. Therefore, Lana by all accounts, is now free to date, even if that means fellow inamates with bad hair cuts.

BUT IT’S TIME TO EXORCISE

Back at Briarcliff, we learn that a Father Merrin equivalent is contacted and the rite begins. To be honest, an exorcism seemed to be a but much too soon. It;s only episode two, but I guess the writers needed a vehicle in which to inform us all about Sister Jude’s tawdry back story. More on that in a bit.

Anyway, the farm boy starts is strapped down and starts shouting things in Latin, Greek, French (I think) and maybe a little ancient Aramaic. Something in on those of those languages sounds like he was repeating the name “Anderson Cooper” over and over again. As Dr. (Quinto) checks his blood pressure, Farm Boy resumes his English skills and gets in his head. He says something about being glad he gave Oliver up. Huh??? Mom? Dad? Old boyfriend?? Just like Friedkin’s The Exorcist, Dr. Threadson is reminded NOT to listen to anything Satan says. That’s when the fun begins. The Father Merrin character (who looked like Ned Beatty’s much uglier brother) gets slapped around and goes flying across the room.

The exorcism doesn’t work. Odds are that if given the chance out of his restraints, a second prize Guernsey will be eating for dinner while pratlling off the names of CNN staffers in a foreign tongue.

Satan 1 Priests 0

As Farm Boy is recovering in a cell after his botched exorcism, Sister Jude walks by. His eyes are bleeding and he’s screaming–in pain, but coherently. Sister Jude shows some uncharacerstic mercy by entering the cell to render aid. As she attempts to wipe blood from his eyes, he verbally takes her to town and in doing so, gives us a brief overview Sister Jude’s sordid past.

Jude or Judy as she was once called, used to be something of a B-Girl. She used to wear red gowns , lipstick and cheap CZ jewelry while singing badly at nasty, dirty gin joints for US servicemen home from the fighting the dreaded German Hun. She drank and smoked and cavorted with strange men (56 of them in the act of the ultimate oral fixation or so says Mr. Devil) and we learn after one particular night of whoring and drinking, she was driving home and while listening to a bad version of the Paleface tune”Buttons sand Bows” (this had to have taken place in the mid-40’s) she hits a little girl in a blue coat who for some reason, was out in the middle of the road in the middle of the night.

Satan’s Field Frump then assumes the face/body/soul of the little blue coated girl. She reminds Judy that she didn’t even stop to render aid. Wow, a hit and run. Plus, we learn that Sister Jude IS IN FACT, wearing red underwear. So that WASN’T part of the pre-priest feast fantasy she had last week.

Interesting.

It would seem that Sister Jude assumed a new, monastic life as a means of running away from her old one.

This outing at the hands of Old Scratch enrages Sister Jude. She starts pounding on the patient. This ruckus draws the staff to the cell, including Sister Mary Eunice (Mrs. Montgomery last season). Farm Boy goes into cardiac arrest and dies….Sister Mary Eunice standing in the doorway, faints at the exact same moment. Any fan of the horror genre would immediately think this was ‘classic soul transference’.

AND HOW DID THAT MAKE YOU FEEL?

Tonight’s episode was better than last week’s. It redeemed itself for me in some ways. I liked delving into Sister Jude’s background. I’m also digging the fact that we’re learning more about Dr. Mengele Arden, the twisted sadistic physician having a field day in an unregulated asylum with guinea pigs ripe for the proverbial picking.

In on particularly interesting scene, Dr. Arden and Sister Mary Eunice, who we know is something of a groupie not to mention, the doc’s principle dirty work do-er (she feeds ‘te creatures’ in the woods buckets of bloody viscera). She tells Arden that creatures were particularly aggressive during their feeding the evening before. They all but shredded the buckets. Arden then rewards her with ‘a treat’. It’s a candy apple. Mary Eunice declines, saying that Sister Jude is part dentist and that sweets are evil. But Arden insists and he brings the apple to her mouth rather seductively…well, as seductive as actor, James Cromwell can be) and she takes a bite.

Okay…who didn’t get the sense that this was a scene taken right out of Genesis? Arden (the serpent) tempting Eve (Mary Eunice) with an apple (knowledge). You could practically hear Arden hiss whenever he uttered a word with an “S” in it.

You can also insert your own “an apple a day” and doctor joke here.

Moving on—Arden has learned through the asylum grapevine that Mary Eunice fainted when the exorcised patient dies. He goes to see her in institution’s infirmary. She’s asleep. He pulls down her nightgown to preserve her modesty and she awakens. But….but…something is amiss. She isn’t the same, sweet, innocent we once knew. It’s nothing she says, it’s just her countenance. For starters, she in a nightgown….not her nunly habit. Her hair is down. Her expression is different, as are her mannerisms. There’s a sarcastic tone to everything she says to the doctor. They exchange pleasantries and he leaves. She watches him walk out the door. The look on her face is wickedly sinister. As she rearranges the covers, a crucifix high above on the wall, starts moving.

As for soul possesion: mission accomplished.

ARDEN HARDENS

Arden also has a diner date with a prostitute, a petite blond number who resembles his nun-friend. She gets all sassy with him and he tells her that her behavior is unbecoming…as is her tawdry clothing and make-up. She smarts off to him once again and he grabs a large carving knife that he’d been using to slice up some very rare prime rib and rams it into the table. He’s stern; he’s serious. He’s also armed. She complies. He tells her to go into the next room to clean her face and change into a nun’s outfit.

What we have here is a prime example of sexual transference. He can’t have Sister Mary Eunice, so he goes for the next best thing; a proxy. Oldest trick in the psychiatric book.

As she changes clothes in another room, she notices a box on the dresser. She opens it and notices newspaper clippings…about murders mostly, then underneath that are some old school Polaroids. At first it looks like he has a thing for Betty Page–you know, fairly innocent Kitten With A Whip stuff, then additional pics indicate the bondage gets even more severe. Hog-tying, hood over heads–things like that. I think I even saw a few crime scene photos; a bloody face or stump or something. He hears her rifling through stuff and opens the door.

Dr. Arden is displeased. The hooker knows he’s displeased and she’s scared because of this. This is one scary cat. She’s willing to say keep the money, just let me out of here. Nah, that simply isn’t going to happen. He slams the door and tells her to lie down on the bed and slowly show him “her mossy bank”. As he prepares to enter her seminary, she kicks him squarely in the figs and escapes as he writhes on the floor.

Fear not, she’ll be creature food by Halloween.

IN SUMMATION

Perhaps I’m watching this season with a far less critical eye because I’m not getting the same psychological nuances I got last season. One would think there would be more since this takes place in a mental institution. I think I was reading way too much into certain scenes last year. Because of that, I was rather disappointed how season one ended. So, in order to keep my last synopsis from turning into an angry rant that Martians and psychotic physicians killed women, nuns, simple-minded farm boys and Jessica Lange’s career , I’ll view this season with the sole purpose of being entertained.

BUT…

Whatever happened to the Vanessa Hudgins lookin’ wife who barricaded herself from Leatherface in one of the asylum’s cells? Seeing your one armed husband ice-picked to death after being chased by the same maniac has to be at the very lest, a bit unsettling. How did she get out? This is one loose end I need tied up.

Lastly, I will close on this: mixing religion (Catholicism specifically) and science is juicy and in many ways, brilliant in terms of thematic conflict; mainly because religion and science are arch enemies. I also like the biblical references…or at least the ones I think I’m picking up on. There’s the Adam and Eve thing, the possibility that Dr. Arden is playing God by making forest dwelling creature zombies (extreme Creationism). There’s temptation, redemption, crime, punishment. Good, evil. Tons of statements on morality.

Lana “Lesbian” Winters, is a thorn in Jude’s side. She lied to the Head Nun about the nature of the story/assignment she wasn. She arranged an interview with Jude under the guise of wanting to know more about the molasses bread the Briarcliff kitchen staff makes and sells. She also defied Jude’s authority by sneaking in to Briarcliff to get her story on Bloody Face. She’s also a big ol’ Lesbian, which I’m sure is a big no-no in Jude’s world, probably because back in her gin-swilling, blow job-a-palooza days, she probably banged a few feline gongs a time or two. Jude hopes that Lana she can be “cured” during her confinement at the institution. From being a lesbian sure, but because Jude also considers her a liar, a sinner and a bad writer, albeit an ambitious one who wants a crack at real news as opposed to women’s topics which for a female reporter circa 1964, would have been what she would have been relegated to covering. Jude references her lack of talent tonight, admitting that she’d read a few articles and found them ‘compelling’, such as the one that covered wayward geese and others that included soup recipes and spot removal.

Dr. Arden referred to Lana tonight as ‘that Sapphic reporter”.

I laughed.

So far, I’ve seen examples of at least seven of the Ten Commandments broken and it’s just episode two. How do you like them apples?